Was I the Wave?

Secret City; 2011

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Four years ago, Graham Van Pelt earned a Polaris Music Prize nomination for Five Roses, his debut full-length as Miracle Fortress. It was a lush, loop-fed effort that found Van Pelt, formerly a major part of Montreal indie-poppers Think About Life, working with electronic melodies and textures. Nearly everywhere you turned, there was a rich sound or hook or surface to uncover, even if the songwriting frameworks didn't always click. In Was I the Wave?, Van Pelt's first batch of recordings since, he has crafted a record as sleek as it is introverted.

Van Pelt has largely shifted his energies here from texture to rhythm, resulting in beat-driven music that sacrifices color (one might also say clutter) for clean lines. Scaling back and toning up lends what's here a new focus; the production values seem purely in service of the song, almost all of which feel like they're presented in easy gelcap form. On Foals-like "Tracers", Van Pelt tops a stutter-stepping bass figure and drum machine with sheets of guitar tremolo. Everything is smoothed and stacked seamlessly. If you wanted to follow a bleep or bloop or warble or corkscrewing guitar for a few extra bars, you wouldn't get too far.

Like its predecessor, Was I the Wave? features a healthy portion of instrumental interludes, most of which tend to be shorter and more claustrophobic by comparison. While Five Roses' title track was a full-blown experience unto itself, both "Wave" and "Before" function as quick drone experiments that whine and yawn for introduction's sake; both also jumpstart this record's finest moments. Be it in the curling vocal melody of "Spectre" or the precise, high-altitude moves of "Miscalculations", each boasts the kind of vital signs missing from the cold arpeggios of, say, first single "Raw Spectacle". While Van Pelt has crafted an album that's sharper in most ways than his debut, it could do with a bit more of these tracks' personality and sense of melodic wonder.